Day: January 21, 2014

Entertainment Film

How Peter Jackson’s team created the Oscar-nominated soundscape of ‘Smaug’

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As reported on The Verge. By Nathan Ingraham The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was just nominated for two Oscars relating to its sound design — it’s up against some tough competition in the form of Gravity and a number of other excellent films, but a new mini-documentary from SoundWorks makes a good case for Peter Jackson’s latest adventure into Middle-earth. The video contains interviews with a number of sound mixers at Park Road Post Studios in Wellington, New Zealand who…

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iPhone

WobL Smartphone Stand And Alarm App For iPhone Ensure You’ll Snooze Forever

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As reported on TechCrunch.  by Darrell Etherington I have an iPhone, and like most adult humans I imagine, I use that as my alarm clock in place of one of those quaint old-fashioned pieces of dedicated hardware we used to use. But it’s not always ideal: you can’t just smash a button to get it to stop trying to wake you up, for instance. The wobL, a new Kickstarter project launching today, hopes to fix that. As its…

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SmartPhone

LG’s Curved Display G Flex Smartphone Will Go Up For AT&T Pre-Order On January 24

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As reported on TechCrunch. by Jordan Crook Curved displays are officially a thing. The LG G Flex, the Korean company’s latest attempt to battle back Samsung, is going to be available for pre-order at AT&T starting this Friday, January 24. Sprint pulled the trigger last week, announcing that the phone would be available for pre-order on January 31, but AT&T has obviously beaten the yellow carrier to the punch by a week. Still, AT&T never mentioned in its announcement…

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Google

Google tests the performance limits of D-Wave’s quantum computers

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As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS We’ve long known that D-Wave’s quantum computers are specialized tools rather than Swiss Army Knives, but just how good are they at their intended tasks? Googlehas just conducted some benchmarking to find out, and the short answer is that these systems are very good — but they have definite limits. A current-generation D-Wave 2 is about 35,500 times faster than a generalized problem-solving computer when both are running standard software. However, some of that advantage…

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Environmental Tech

Heat-sensitive solar cell could lead to much more on-demand energy

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As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS It’s tough to build solar cells that capture both heat and light — most of these multi-talented devices can’t trap more than one percent of the energy they receive. However, MIT has just blown past that limitation with a prototype chip that absorbs warmth through an outer layer of carbon nanotubes. The tubing heats up photonic crystals so much that they glow with an intense light, giving an attached solar cell more energy than…

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